“A drop of just 1.2 percent in GDP in the first quarter of this year proves that the Polish economy is resilient to the coronavirus crisis, despite the third wave of the pandemic spreading across the country at that time,” the finance minister has said.

Poland’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 1.2 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2021, the Central Statistical Office (GUS) said in a flash estimate on Friday.

“The beginning of this year brought about an improvement in economic activity in Poland,” Tadeusz Kościński told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on Friday.

“Despite the third wave of the pandemic, rising infections and harsher restrictions, GDP went up by 0.9 percent quarter on quarter,” the minister continued, but admitted that GDP declined compared to the same period of 2020.

“The GDP level was lower than last year, but the annual drop at 1.2 percent was milder than in the fourth quarter of 2020.”

The country’s GDP slumped by 2.7 percent in the last three months of 2020.